Room for Doubt and Rule of Fear

“A closed mind is a sign of hidden doubt.”
-Harold DeWolf

Doubt is an important subject to me, as I so often struggle with it. What I learned from my Mom from a young age was that I shouldn’t fear it, but explore it wisely. Well here is one attempt to do so:

 

Close-mindedness:

It seems as though the phrase “close-minded” is more widely applied to those who are religious than those who are not. The stereotype, if not the fact, is that a person of faith clings to their doctrines without examining or analyzing them, and the secularists or humanists are open to all options. I do think this happens sometimes, but I think that the opposite can often be true, and either version of close-mindedness (secular or religious) can be deeply obstructive to truth’s riverways.

There is a current cultural claim of being open-minded that is decidedly not. The post-modern young secularist has decided what the world is—it is what they want and feel—and anyone who challenges that will be promptly labeled “close-minded’ and dismissed. I find this sad and ironic.

It would seem—again, via stereotype—that people are more accustomed to the very notion of religious close-mindedness than secular, post-modern, or humanistic close-mindedness. Religious close-mindedness is an easier sell in our culture. Religion offers very certain instruction on morals, beliefs and behaviors and does not allow a great deal of room to maneuver away from those things. Most forms of secularism, per current perception, allow morals, beliefs and behaviors to be more malleable. Redefinition and relativism replace constancy and conviction.

I think that many religious people also buy into this notion, and can sometimes be nervous about having their convictions pinned down by someone secular, for fear of being called close-minded. Of course, the difference between living close-minded and living with conviction is vast, but that is another matter, albeit one not sufficiently explored.

What genuinely concerns me are not those creeds which openly admit that they are fixed, but rather those that champion, and claim to be, one thing—open-minded or tolerant—while, in fact, being something else entirely. The source for this concern does not arise solely from my desire to defend a life of deep conviction—though I do so---but from a chance encounter with a certain literary discussion:

 

Room for Doubt, or Not:

I love reading reviews for Young Adult (YA) Literature novels. The YA author and reader community is vibrant, interactive, and extremely internet savvy. They offer some interesting analyses of the works themselves, but also provide perspective on the young adult literary zeitgeist.

You can get more information than you ever needed, and I find the debates over various Young Adult novel controversies very telling. Often the debates seem more interesting than the works themselves, although that may simply be the fact that I am inherently drawn to controversy, and NOT terribly interested in reading novel after novel of paranormal dystopian love triangles.

For example, one debate surrounded a sixteen-year-old female character that chose a “friends-with-benefits” scenario with her love interest, versus getting married or any form of commitment. Did that make her feminist and independent, or did that make her fearful, selfish and unfeeling towards said love interest? Gender and sexuality debates are some of the most common controversies in the YA community. It would appear that this has much to do with the visibly high quantity of female authors, readers, and reviewers in this community.

Which brings me to a review of a book called “The Knife of Never Letting Go.” I should state right up front that I have not read this book, nor is this post ABOUT this book. It was about a small controversy which stemmed from it, and about how that debate was conducted, and what troubles me therein.

 

 

In the book review and the discussion it spawned, one reviewer was offended by the fact that, in the novel, there is a certain germ or disease that affects the minds and bodies of males in a decidedly different way than it affects the minds and bodies of females. This reviewer took this to mean that the author asserts there to be something essentially, or “qualitatively” different between men and women. The reviewer was appalled at this claim. Debate ensues.

Well fairly soon, another commenter chimed in with the very viable argument that there are some inherent “biological/physiological/biochemical” differences, and the author was not being sexist to build upon that in his novel. This argument was not well received, and most of the other commenters continued to insist that this notion that men and women are somehow different by nature is archaic and will throw us back to the Stone Age or some such.

The following comment boggled my mind and represents the death of any real debate:

“a lot of time merely implying that there exists room for doubt about something is too great a compromise”

I don’t want to be brutally unfair, but the moment my eyes came across that sentence I copied and pasted it because I could scarcely believe it was said. Neither the removal nor the addition of context does the sentence any favors. The blatant claim here is that the mere implication of any room for doubt is an unacceptable compromise. Apply this logic across almost any debate and you run into serious trouble. Ultimately, in this particular discussion (link provided here), the Implication is that there are essential differences between men and women, particularly physiological differences, the Room For Doubt is the possibility that those differences are in any way essential or immutable, and the Too Great A Compromise would be allowing this idea to be given a seat at any debate table ever.

I understand why the commenter feels this way…he fears the confines of “gender essentialism” and how women have been ill-treated and restricted by it. But fear is the key word in that sentence. No matter how good your argument, nor how valid your concern, deciding not to acknowledge and explore doubt is generally a fear-driven decision. And this is coming from someone (me!) who believes that doubt can be deeply foolish, deeply wrong, and can kill you if mishandled.

So why do I conclude that exploration of doubt is necessary and that this rather secular, open-minded, tolerance-advocating commenter is giving poor advice despite their good intentions? Because, as a person of faith, if I tried to dismiss every doubt about God that frightened me or challenged my understanding of the world, that would be implying that the truths I know, proclaim, and try to live by aren’t strong enough to stand up against the doubts. And since I believe they ARE strong enough, I HAVE to face those doubts without fear. I can’t say it is always easy, but I can say that it is important and I hold a deep conviction that I must strive to do this.

“Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe”

-Henry David Thoreau

 

Faith

The controversy regarding faith stems largely from the idea that it is blind…that the entire merit of faith is the very lack of evidence. If that is the case, doubt would be an understandable and frequent occurrence.

But I don’t think that’s the whole picture of faith. I referred to the siren metaphor once before on this blog because the tale of the sirens speaks to the importance of tying yourself to a conviction based on evidence—on genuine knowing—despite how the current sense, circumstance, or temptation tries to demolish that conviction. The knowing came first. Faith is the thing that keeps you from forgetting what you knew, when everything and everyone around you would have you do so.

As in C.S. Lewis’ “The Silver Chair,” faith is remembering that there is a sun when you haven’t seen it in a long time, and everyone else is telling you it never existed, that it is a product of your imagination, that it is mere wish-fulfillment. But you basked in it before, and, if nothing else, your remember that in your very blood-stream.

 

The trouble with fear-based analysis is that it’s “see no evil” in its worst sense; it’s failing to face the chinks, the failures, the confusions. Ultimately it’s failing to learn and grow. And faith is meant to grow.

Again, one thinks of the phrase “blind faith”, but I think that is something of a misnomer. Faith is not recklessly blind; it believes in what it knows but cannot see. There’s a difference. Doubt will occur…the difference is the manner in which the doubt is handled. Fearlessly, or fearfully? Moored or unmoored?

 

Advance or Withdrawal

A good pastor once said that when one experiences doubt, don’t ignore it. Take it up and bring it to God, not away from him. He stated that when we withdraw from Him—“to get perspective” we claim—we are not able to truly get free of other influences and prejudices. There is no such thing as neutral ground. To imagine that as possible is to make a great mistake. Nature abhors a vacuum, does it not?

The illustration he gave was of how we sometimes come to doubt the nature of a friend that we rarely see, until we get together with them. Then we are reminded of their qualities and our confidence in them is reestablished. Withdrawal from a person is not the way to prove our theories about them, whether positive or negative…we go to the subject of the theories and dive in. Then we discover if we are right or wrong. Never by withdrawal.

This applies to all fields of study: the field develops (be it physics, medicine, or the social sciences) when someone approaches the conventional wisdom with a doubt or a suspicion. If they are wrong, the exploration of their doubt will strengthen that which is correct already. If they are right, something wrong, insubstantial, or misapplied will fall away (i.e. those thing which are “but rules taught by men”). One can see this happening when Jesus challenged the Pharisees. The core of truth remained. It was only the religious frippery that was sloughed off.

 

Giving up the Rule of Fear

Returning to the debate regarding “room for doubt” and the issue of gender essentialism, one begins to see what happens when room for doubt is not allowed in debate. Truth is neglected on behalf of conventional wisdom. The truth here is that there are basic biological differences between men and women which influence certain parts of life, including physical capabilities, bodily functions, and (occasionally) actual behavior.

The prevailing post-modern conventional wisdom is that what you want and how you feel about what you are trumps all of that…or, more extreme still, that all of it is a product of “social construction.” Ironically, the voice of someone advocating a concrete, provable, scientific view is drowned out by the voices of those reacting emotionally, fearing the consequences of any hint of gender essentialism, even if that hint is borne by fact.

Doubt is hard, and can be very uncomfortable. But ought it not to be taken hold of and made into something useful? The difference between acknowledging or examining doubt, and succumbing to it is the difference between hearing someone out—really listening to what they have to say and considering it—and simply being batted back and forth by every single argument you encounter. The only reason to fear doubt is if you expect the latter to happen to you…which it needn’t. It all depends on where you take it.

 

 

 

The Pilgrim's Regress

C.S. Lewis is easily my favorite author, and it’s entirely possible I over-reference him. I often find myself prefacing such references to friends and family alike by saying “I know I used a Lewis quote last time, but it really, really applies.” It may not be the same for everyone—nor do I expect it to be—but something about how Lewis thinks and communicates resonates deeply and effectively with me.

As a result of this, I’m always happy to find that there’s more Lewis out there as yet unread by me. Some years ago I was running my eyes over the books in a bookstore and saw “The Pilgrim’s Regress” by C.S. Lewis. I was very intrigued. Now, I have never read Pilgrim’s Progress (to my shame. It’s on the list) but I know the story from various sources: children’s books, general Christian pop culture, and—believe it or not—an old radio program called “Adventure’s in Odyssey.” Eventually I bought “The Pilgrim’s Regress” and told myself that I was not allowed to read it until I had read the Bunyan book, that I might better understand them both.

My discipline failed, and this last year I broke down, skipped ahead and read “The Pilgrim’s Regress.” Twice. This is not one of Lewis’ more popular books…and understandably so. It is very obscure. But I love it and come now to advocate on its behalf, despite the fact that it is very particular and thick. Lewis himself wrote an afterword in a later edition marking the presence of “needless obscurity and an uncharitable temper.” He added to it summaries of the allegorical intent and explanations of certain terms which were clear to him, but became unknown to later generations, so that the meanings would be rather more accessible to the readers.

There is, in fact, a helpful manual for this book which does much to clarify it…but it is not “Pilgrim’s Progress.” It is “Surprised by Joy.” “The Pilgrim’s Regress” is essentially the story of Lewis’ conversion to Christianity…allegory-style. The obscurities are due to philosophical musing and encounters that Lewis personally experienced, and which are not necessarily universal, or currently widespread in education. The book also has much Greek, Latin, and French and draws upon a greater body of literature and philosophy than I may ever hope to consume in my entire life. There are a few unfortunate metaphors used by C.S. Lewis which smack of Euro- and Ethnocentrism (though, I think, not as badly as some might suspect), and several references to specific trends of the 1920’s and 1930’s. Thus, this book was something of an effort.

But it was worth the effort, and I feel compelled to explain why.

THE TALE

Told as a dream—dreamt by an unnamed narrator—the story follows John, starting from his youth in the land of Puritania (Which is traditional Christianity or perhaps, more accurately, nominal Christianity) and on to his travels throughout the land depicted in the map below:

A few major things define John’s youth: 1. the fear of the Landlord (God as described by parents and clergy alike) and of the great “Black Hole” (Hell as described by the very same), 2. The hypocritical behavior of the Puritanians, and…3. Something which he calls “The Island” or “Sweet Desire.” Sweet Desire comes when one day he looks out and sees an Island which fills him with such longing that, if nothing else in all the world, he longs to long for it. The search for this Island leads him away from the rote Christianity of his youth and towards many dead ends: lust, sensuality, and sentimentality.

It leads him further through many of the beliefs and philosophies of both the current age, and of all ages, as John tries to capture his Sweet Desire through Romanticism (Called “Mr. Halfways in this story…ostensibly because he only gets you halfway there?), as it is nearly killed by Freudianism which attempts to distill us down to very much less than the sum of our parts, then as John (and his Desire) are subsequently rescued by the armor-clad woman Reason, cultivated by the old man Wisdom—father of many philosophers—informed by the hermit History, and finally brought face-to-face with the fact of God, forced by Reason to follow the path towards him. (Of course he could have fought reason, but then he knew he would have fallen with her.)

John’s traveling companion for the majority of his journey is a man by the name of Vertue whose allegorical office lies explicitly in his name. Vertue stands in intended contrast to John. John is driven by desire. Vertue is driven by moral will. The two are often at odds and drawn in different directions, and John parts with Vertue on occasion. John is less concerned with the Landlord’s rules (God’s Law/Morality), and more concerned with finding his beautiful Island. Vertue doggedly, calmly follows the rules, knowing them to be written in the skin of the earth. The only time when Vertue falls—at which time Virtue must be carried by Desire—is when he witnesses the coming nihilism of the peoples of “Marxomanni—Mussolimini, Swastici…”

This book was published in 1933, but Lewis did not feel any express need to heavily veil with metaphor the danger he saw posed by the “revolutionary sub-men of the Left or the Right.” He portrays them as a return to barbarism, causing Vertue himself (itself) to take ill.

The allegorical style gives great room for analysis of philosophy, theology, and of Lewis’ very specific intellectual and spiritual path towards conversion. There is so much being said, that I will not try to get it all down here—rather I will simply examine a few of the driving points in the story which most struck me and encouraged me to read ahead the first time despite “Pilgrim’s Progress” and read the entire thing aloud to my husband the second time, and to now try and convince as many of my family members and friends as possible to read it, so that I can discuss it with them!

THE VERY SHARPEST EDGES

Sweet Desire:

For anyone who has felt that piercing, painful Sweet Desire, the drive John feels to seek it out will easily be understood. Unlike Vertue, who seeks to do right for right’s sake and disdain’s the idea of obeying on behalf of punishment or reward, John is swayed by this desire both below and above Vertue. When Vertue sees Savage Nihilism and falls ill, it is John who must carry him—though he was always the weaker and less willful of the two—for Desire has not died by hearing of depravity.

The trouble with Sweet Desire is that we so easily mistake lesser things for its satisfaction. Then we often become disappointed and confused that the “Desire” has failed us, or wasn’t all it seemed it should be in that moment.

But “It comes from the Landlord (God),” old man History tells John. “We know this by its results. It has brought you to where you now are: and nothing leads back to him which did not at first proceed from him.”

Reason Defeats Freudian Philosophy:

One of the darker sections of the story occurs when John and Vertue part ways, and John finds himself imprisoned by a Giant. Having had his hopes disappointed by Mr. Halfways and his daughter, Media, John realizes that Romanticism is not quite the solution to his question about the Island. John then runs into “Sigismund Enlightenment” (or New Enlightenment) who explains to him that all his desires are merely wish-fulfillment dreams. New Enlightenment claims that “the Island was the pretense that you put up to conceal your own lusts from yourself.”

John is imprisoned by this philosophy which causes him to see himself and his fellow man as nothing more than their innards and sinews and fluids, for the Giant who holds them hostage makes everything “transparent.” The Philosophy desires to ever “uncover” us to our basest, rawest form and, in so doing, makes each man a horrifying concoction of parts to one another and dark or meaningless to himself. John decides that, though he had doffed the belief in a Landlord and a Black Hole, this new philosophy—if true—makes all the world a Black Hole and all men and women residents in it, whether they know it or not.

Then comes Reason: “…a woman in the flower of her age: she was so tall that she seemed to [John] a Titaness, a sun-bright virgin clad in complete steel, with a sword naked in her hand.”

The Giant bids her pass out of his land with all haste. But she will none. She asks him three riddles that, because of his philosophy, he cannot answer. Then she plunges her sword into his heart and defeats him.

She proceeds then to explain to John that the New Enlightenment makes three grave errors of reason. First they say that higher things are the copies or covers of lower things (love a copy of lust, or sweet desire a veil for lust). But how can they tell which is the copy and which is the original? Is not the original normally the higher? An oil painting is better than a print, and lamplight much dimmer than sunlight.

Second, she explains the trouble of our foul-looking innards, which so bothered John and made him feel that all was base and vile forever: “He [The Giant”] showed you by a trick what our inwards would look like if they were visible…But in the real world our inwards are invisible…the warmth in your limbs at this moment, the sweetness of your breath as you draw it in…these are the reality: all the sponges and tubes that you saw in the dungeon are the lie”

(John is unconvinced): “But if I cut a man open I should see them in him.”

“A man cut open is, so far, not a man: and if you did not sew him up speedily you would be seeing not organs, but death. I am not denying that death is ugly. But the Giant made you believe that life is ugly.”

Though she reminds John of some truth mixed in the Giant’s trick—for here our innards represent both themselves and our basest thoughts and desires—“it will do you no harm to remember from time to time the ugly sights inside. You come of a race that cannot afford to be proud.”

Reason’s final killing blow against the Giant is simple. He believes in the doctrine of wish-fulfillment while failing to acknowledge that, for many, the idea that there is no God, no moral law, and no hell would be the wish, and Freudian enlightenment the fulfillment. New Enlightenment does not wish to apply to itself its own doctrine.

And so, by aid of Reason, John passes through “Darkest Zeitgeistheim” and the chains of the Spirit of the Age are broken off of him.

John and Vertue

Lewis makes a point that John and Vertue must ultimately travel together. John, it is implied, comes of Pagan blood…thus the Landlord reaches out to him with Sweet Desire, and images of an island (images that are often, sadly, turned into Pagan idols). Vertue is hinted to have come of the “Shepherd People” (the Jews). Since the Shepherd People were able to read, they were given rules, rather than images.

“But who wants rules instead of islands?” asks John.

“That is like asking who wants cooking instead of dinner,” explains History, who is an old Hermit retiring from the world. He says that the Shepherds were made to begin at the right end, rather than suffering through cycles of mistaking images for reality, and feeling desire followed by despair.

“But were the Shepherds not just as bad in their own way? Is it not true that they were illiberal, narrow, bigoted?”

“They were narrow. The thing they had charge of was narrow; it was the Road. They found it. They sign-posted it. They kept it clear and repaired it…”

History tells John that he must swear blood-brotherhood with Vertue for each the Pagan and the Shepherd is only half a man without the other, and only one—the Landlord’s Son—can reconcile them. So John and his Desire must be reconciled with Vertue and his Moral Will.

Nihilism as three steps North of Humanism

A short but valid point that is as relevant now as it was almost eighty years ago when this was written: John meets in his travels North, a certain fellow named Humanist. I agree with the assessment that Lewis puts forth that Humanism is an intellectually dishonest philosophy. It goes almost all the way along the road of eschewing religion, faith and origins of moral principles (other than “society” or “self”). It wants to get down to the bare essentials of humanity and live at that, but does not want to acknowledge that under such principles as have just been mentioned humans are simply animals, and have every freedom to act as such.

Though the Humanist of Lewis’ day was certainly colder and harder than his current heirs, Lewis says something very powerful and very true when he places Mr. Humanist only a few steps away from total Nihilism, even calling it more foolish than nihilism. Humanist attends the needs of posterity? “And who will posterity build for?” Asks Savage nihilism. “If all men who try to build are but polishing the brasses on a sinking ship, then your pale friends [Humanist and his two friends, Neo-Angular and Neo-Classical] are the supreme fools who polish with the rest though they know and admit that the ship is sinking. Their Humanism and whatnot is but the old dream with a new name. The rot in the world is too deep and the leak in the world is too wide. Better give in. Better cut the wood with the grain. If I am to live in a world of destruction let me be its agent and not its patient.”

And but for the fact of the Landlord, Savage would indeed be right.

Northern and Southern Diseases of the Soul

The aforementioned Savage resides in the extreme North of the allegorical land. It is a place of frigid, barren rock. To the extreme South live the witches and magicians, and it is a festering swamp. The “North” of this story and the “South” of it represent two equal and opposite falls from Grace. Lewis calls them the Northern and Southern diseases of the soul. I found this aspect of the story so poignant that this is actually the second time I have mentioned it in this blog. Briefly, both John and Vertue have to fight the Northern and Southern dragons after they have together taken the plunge (given themselves up for Christ). John must fight the Northern dragon because John has the Southern disease in him, as he was always driven by sensation and feeling, and was weak-willed. Fighting the Northern dragon will gain him toughness of mind and body which he desperately needs to keep to the road.

Vertue must fight the Southern dragon because he suffers from Northern pride and rigidness. If the “Southerners” sink wholly into the flesh, the “Northerners” try madly to scrape it all off to the bone. By fighting the Southern dragon Vertue gains fire—passion and raucous joy. These are the things regarding which his moral will was so wary, but now he may freely enjoy.

In summary, the extremes and follies of mankind are not new, they are old, and both are falls. They are not thought up, they are reacted to: “Widespread drunkenness is the father of Prohibition and Prohibition of widespread drunkenness,” Lewis claims in his afterword.

“With both the ‘North’ and the ‘South’ a man has, I take it, only one concern—to avoid them and hold the Main Road. We must not ‘hearken to the over-wise or to the over-foolish giant’. We were made to be neither cerebral men nor visceral men, but Men. Not beasts nor angels but Men—things at once rational and animal.”

If it sounds like Lewis wants to have his cake and eat it too, I think that’s exactly correct. The crucial point is that he also claims there is only one means by which such a thing is possible…and in order to do that thing, one must first give up the cake, the eating of it, and everything else: the self’s desires and the self’s will.

Last Note: Why is it the Pilgrim’s Regress? It refers chiefly to what happens after conversion…to living in the world and traversing back through it, only now seeing it with the veils lifted.

Our Dystopia

There appears to be a fear and curiosity surrounding the idea of things we (mankind) make getting out of hand. There are numerous ways in which this curiosity manifests itself in film and literature and, it being a hearty and prevalent topic, I’ve begun to wonder why it resonates.

It starts with Pygmalion and progresses to Frankenstein; exploring the idea of falling into obsession with the work of our own hands until we lose touch with reality, or finding what we have made to be a danger to others or even to ourselves. Did we tamper with forces we cannot control? Is everything we make doomed to go awry? There is a simultaneous fascination and dread with something created by our very own selves becoming independent of us and our intent.

The trickiness of the situation isn’t revolutionary; many have commented on it. Technologies of advancement and convenience develop right alongside technologies of destruction and manipulation and we don’t always have control of how what we make will be used or developed. It’s good, it’s bad or it’s ugly, and everyone has something different to say about it:

I have an almost religious zeal…not for technology per se, but for the Internet which is for me, the nervous system of mother Earth, which I see as a living creature, linking up.

-Dan Millman (self-help guru)

If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger.

-Frank Lloyd Wright (Architect)

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life.

-John F. Kennedy (President)

Men have become the tools of their tools.

-Henry David Thoreau (Poet)

A small sampling, and it is Thoreau’s take which so often fascinates us in literature and film: what happens when the brain-child of man—be it a piece of technology, or a form of government—turns on its maker?

There are two main versions of this: The A.I. tale (Robots and machines on the rise!) and the Dystopian tale (We thought it was for the best! But the perfect government turned out to be even worse than what we had before!)

I could make a very long list of examples, but instead I will make short ones which highlight the central themes which seem to so strike us. The main ones for A.I. start with the Terminator, in which man-made machines battle humans for control of the world. That which we made to do our bidding now seeks to destroy us and take our place.

In i, robot, a similar thing happens, but with a twist; the robots are not out to destroy humans…they are trying to protect us by efficiently eradicating our flaws. We have wars and violence, and in order to fully protect us (as their protocols dictate) they must choose how to cultivate us “for our own good” which may include killing some of us and removing from us our freedom.

Finally the most obvious one, which surpasses all the prior stages: the machines we have made no longer battle mankind. They have long since won, and now control humans, mind and body. They make use of us as we once made use of them. The story has become a  modern classic: The Matrix.

The list goes on, well into children’s films: the too-clever robot in “The Incredibles” and the atrophied bodies (due to over-reliance on technology) of the humans in the brilliant robot-centered cartoon “WALL-E.”

Dystopian tales are a slightly different beast, but they ask the same questions: what happens when our best plans eat us alive?

In the Hunger Games books (a young adult series), the government demands children from each district as tribute to take part in a battle to the death for the simultaneous sake of entertainment and retention of control. It’s Battle Royale, Gladiators and Reality TV all rolled into one. As the story progresses, the theme arises that the cure (revolution!) for the ill (oppressive government) quickly becomes a disease in and of itself (i.e. the French Revolution).

(the hunger games heroine in the film version)

Dystopians are popular now, so the young adult literary list in particular could go for miles. In the film Equilibrium, art and affection are considered inciters of violence and instability, so they are suppressed.

In Fahrenheit 451, literature is deemed the chief danger to society, and books are to be burned.

In the book Divergent, society is formed—and deeply divided—around each individual’s belief regarding how to prevent war. Five factions separate five belief systems regarding what society most needs—courage, peacefulness, selflessness, knowledge and honesty—and from the divisions grow mutations of every virtue. Courage becomes violent recklessness. Peacefulness becomes withdrawal/inaction. Selflessness becomes suppressive stoicism. Knowledge becomes pride and power-hunger. Honesty becomes cruelty and moral ambivalence.

In V for Vendetta, a crisis ushered in an extreme government (blatantly reminding the viewer of Hitler’s rise in Germany due to financial crisis) and the government controls the arts, objectives and morals of the people. Moreover it is the extreme example of one classic definition of ‘the state’: monopoly on violence.

(the vigilante and his protege)

On and on the list goes: governments that control the arts, conventions, technology, marriage or religion. The point here—which seems peripheral to these stories but ought not to be—is that these governments were not formed by one all-mighty Lex Luther-style bad guy. Most of the governments in these stories were formed by either the will or at least the consent of the people. The people in these books and films demanded safety, security or stability in some fashion, and the government responded accordingly. But then, like all these other man-made aspirations towards man-made ideas of perfection, they went badly, badly awry. Why we all assume the ‘awry’ part to be inevitable is another discussion entirely. Why we are so interested in the concept of our own creations turning on us is the crux of the thing.

Why?

Because we are the made things that have run off and tried to make ourselves like unto our maker. We are the created servants hell-bent on usurping the creator’s place. We’re the ones set in a position to rule, who rule so ruthlessly, and so very far outside of the original intent.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that is us. Except, unlike robots or governments, we are actually lit up with the divine spark (should we choose to live in the light of that fire) and that means the comparison to bureaucracies and machinery stops pretty well short of the full effect. We do not love tyrannical governments or violent robots. We do not vie for their salvation. We want them dead and destroyed…by machine guns and grenades if at all possible. We want them toppled, dissembled and unable to recover.

God seeks our recovery from misguided usurpation and self-dictatorship. He wants to fling us the rope, pull us up and mend us. He gives us the very strength we use to either fight him or seek him. So this is the crucial difference between our approach regarding when the things we make go awry (pull the plug?) and when we go awry:

“God loves human beings. God loves the world. Not an ideal human, but human beings as they are; not an ideal world, but the real world. What we find repulsive in their opposition to God, what we shrink back from with pain and hostility, namely, real human beings, the real world, this is for God the ground of unfathomable love.”

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer

This is a fact which, quite honestly, I can scarcely begin to grasp, and from which springs restoration. Since I'm pretty troublesome and often awry of God's best and have trouble balancing judgement and mercy this is befuddling to me. But it's so. We are not glitchy products but rather, He tells us, a labor of love.

A Review: Jephte's Daughter, by Naomi Ragen

Naomi Ragen’s novel, Jephte’s daughter, is about a young Hassidic (Jewish ultra-orthodox) girl who is raised in the United States, and is arranged to marry a young Hassidic scholar in Jerusalem. She must leave everything she knows and loves to marry a man she has only just met. It sounds like a traditional set-up for—I don’t know—a romance novel or some such. (It’s an arranged marriage!!! But will it become true love?!? No.)

But this is not a romance novel (though there are some slightly extraneous romantic elements towards the end) and I suspect this isn’t the best way to introduce this novel, at any rate.

The title of this novel is derived from a story in the book of Judges. Jephte (Spelled Jephthah in my translation) makes a horrifying vow to God, that he will sacrifice the first thing that comes out of his house if he is granted victory in battle. He is granted victory. His daughter is the first sight for his eyes as he approaches home. And he is duty bound to sacrifice her. She accepts her fate and asks only for time to mourn that she will die a virgin.

The parallels between the story of Jephte’s daughter and the protagonist of this novel—Batsheva Ha-Levi—are pretty explicitly drawn so I don’t think I’ll be ruining anything for potential readers by expounding upon that parallel.

Batsheva has been raised in wealth and relative isolation, for there are not many Hassidic Jews in the area of California where she lives and where her father is a very successful businessman. Batsheva is her parents’ only child and as such, she is cherished and spoiled. She has an outside tutor (a young gentile college student by the name of Elizabeth) who has introduced her to the sorts of literature that the average Hassidic girl would never see from a mile off (Women in Love and Lady Chatterly’s Lover have the most frequent mention.)

Batsheva is beautiful. She is happy. She is “ill-acquainted with the ways of the world”. She is full of life and she loves God.  She does not lament much the confines of her religious life—firstly because she knows nothing else, and secondly because her confines are few by comparison to others of her sect. She has a yearning and passionate and artistic mind. She struggles, she questions, but she always comes back to her center of faith in God.

        “She loved those instances in the Bible where people took flying leaps of faith headlong into the fearsome unknown and God was always there, like a good father.” (Pg 23)

          “…the more she learned to admire the skilled hand, the wise eye of the artists and photographers she loved, the more she began to perceive the world as a giant canvas and God as the greatest artist of all. So that later, when she finally learned about Darwin, the idea was as absurd and incomprehensible to her as the suggestion that the Mona Lisa had come about because a few cans of paint had accidentally tipped over and dripped their colors onto a chance canvas” (Pg 28)

She is also very much only 18 years old at the beginning of the novel, and becoming increasingly curious about things such as sex, intimacy and romantic love.

       “But God had looked at all of this, His ideas, His wonderful sense of color and design put into action and had said merely that it was good. Not great. Not fantastic. Just good. But when he had looked at man and woman together, He had said it was “very good.” So you could just imagine.” (Pg 35)

But Batsheva’s father, Abraham Ha-Levi, feels guilty. He is the direct descendant of a famous line of Hassidic Rabbis, but instead of devoting himself to the Talmud and a life of poverty, he thinks he has been too perfunctory about his Hassidism and has made an awful lot of money.

Herein lies the sacrifice. In order to devote to God what he feels he must, Batsheva’s father seeks out a husband—the aforementioned Hassidic scholar in Jerusalem—who will reestablish with Batsheva the famous Ha-Levi line. He figures Batsheva will marry this man, they will have great scholars for children, and Batsheva’s father will compensate for his youthful rebellion and his lack of study. He sacrifices her to a very different life than she has known—and to a man she does not know—to ease his guilt.

I should mention that Naomi Ragen’s inspiration for this novel was the instance of a real life Hassidic woman who committed a homicide-suicide (she took her small child with her). Ragen wished to investigate the experiences and emotional state of someone who would do such a horrible thing.

So, be warned. Her marriage is not a good one. And this brings me to one of the most well-executed aspects of this story: Isaac Harshen. He is the husband and, without giving away too much, he is the cause of Batsheva’s emotional and psychological distress. He is essentially the villain of the piece.

But here is where I must truly commend Ragen. Even though I knew that Isaac would be the source of trouble at the out-set of the novel, I still hoped he would mend, hoped he would grow, saw chances for redemption and even understood (did not agree with, but could comprehend) many of his reactions. He starts out as a young, intelligent, handsome man who also knows very little of the world.

But he knows much of his world. In his community in Jerusalem he is well-thought-of and pious and shrewd. He knows, ultimately, how to wield his world against Batsheva.

Ragen does not make Isaac sympathetic in the strictest sense—he grows blatantly cruel—but she makes solid sense of the progression of his thoughts and behaviors. He’s not just unkind because the story needed him to be. You can see exactly how he got that way and why he chooses as he does. You can see it happening with chilling realism right before your eyes. When she describes the “hardening of his heart,” so to speak, towards Batsheva you can (or at least I can) recognize that same mode of thought in some past instance in my life. You know, that time you had both remorse and contempt as options and you saw some faint justification for the contempt and you chose it. Or the decision to capitalize on a miscommunication or on semantics to your own benefit. I’ve known myself to sometimes do the things the Isaac does, and that is scary…and an important truth to recognize—that we have that in ourselves.

From the point of Batsheva’s marriage, the story takes many a twist and turn (and indeed does some things I did not anticipate) and it consists of both good prose and a compelling story. I had to remind myself to look up at the subway stops to make sure I didn’t miss mine while I was reading this, I was so engrossed.

The book has rotating perspectives, giving liberty to drop into postitively anyone’s mind at any time, which I enjoyed. I don’t always like being restricted to one mind for hundreds of pages. It’s a personal preference. I have my own mind to deal with, don’t I? Plus it makes the characters more real, rather than just passing shadows viewed through a young girl’s eyes.

Therefore I would also like to mention a few of the other significant characters, some of whose roles in the story are best left undiscussed if you intend to read this.

Elizabeth:

The aforementioned gentile tutor. She is not much older than Batsheva, but wiser in the ways of the world—at least, in theory. Sadly she makes all the mistakes a girl in her position (young, smart, beautiful, passionate) ought not to make. There is a sub-plot of her involvement with a professor, but it is not superfluous. It is present to show-case the fact that, for all her freedom by comparison to Batsheva and other Hassids, she is still suffering and the choices she makes do not necessarily bring her happiness. She becomes disgusted with herself, and disillusioned with her lover.

Ultimately Elizabeth is a sweetheart, but never as riveting a character as Batsheva because she doesn’t seem to believe in anything. She’s just ‘awful nice.’ She is treated well by the narrative, but in a novel that acknowledges the centrality of God, that just doesn’t cut it. She’s an aimless sweetheart.

Professor MacLeish:

Pretty much a suave, pretentious jerk. His characterization is not as deep as Isaac Harshen’s, but it doesn’t need to be. He’s pretty peripheral. His primary purpose in the story is to provide a parallel to Isaac. To show that, just as Isaac adheres to the rituals and rules of his faith yet truly has no faith, Professor MacLeish adheres to the rhetoric and philosophies of his field of study, but has grown completely disillusioned with it. He carries on with the tune having lost the beat and any semblance of purpose.

David:

My absolute favorite section of the story consists of David’s struggle with God. David is preparing for priesthood in the Catholic church (a priest? What? I thought we were doing this story in a Hassidic neighborhood in Jerusalem! How did we get to a British Priest-in-training? Don’t worry about it.) He is struggling for his faith, struggling against God and ends up going on a trip to Israel to study the Bible and figure things out.

His struggle culminates in, perhaps, the most compelling passage in the whole book.
Note: Jacob is my favorite character in the Bible. The one with whom I can most relate. The passage shows David hiking out to the Desert and having it out with God—wrestling for His blessing. Even though I don’t agree with every single one of this character’s conclusions at the culmination of this scene, it is still very powerful and his story and struggles resonated with me in a way I cannot quite describe.

And The Rest:

There are some interesting arguments presented throughout the latter portion of the book, particularly interesting for someone familiar with both Judaism and Christianity. For instance, many Christians struggle with God’s wrath and the harshness in the Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament) while finding Jesus’ message of love and faith a little easier to grasp (if not easy to live). A lot of people see the Old Testament and the New as the "wounding then healing" aspects of God, respectively.

Yet in this novel the opposite perspective is introduced, which I found interesting and ironic in light of the aforementioned:

       “Even “Love they neighbor as thyself,” that which he had always believed the most Christian of ideas, that, too, was written plainly in the Hebrew texts given to Moses. In many ways, its words seemed to bring him closer to the goodness and holiness he had always searched for than the harsh words of the new..., “Think not I have come to bring peace. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Pg 375)

Curiously, though Christian myself, I have always had an easier time breathing in the Old Testament than the new, for various reasons. I believe both are the word of God, but the latter is sometimes much harder for me to grasp. I just think it interesting to note, that some things that are ‘the easy part’ for some, are ‘the hard part’ for others. I’m also glad that the text pointed out some important things that Christians often forget:

        “He had been taught, had he not, that Jesus said, “I come not to change the Law, but to strengthen and verify it.” But it had never occurred to him, never seemed important to him, that Jesus himself came of Jewish parents, and the law he spoke of was the same law of the Jews.” (Pg. 375)

Vital information, if you ask me.

Anyhow, the conclusion of the story actually appeals to my affinity for blood-ties, although an opposite experience than that of a certain converting character can be found in real life in the form of Lauren Winner who wrote about her conversion from Orthodox Judaism (to which she originally converted from Reform Synagogue-going childhood.) to Christianity.  Her book, "Girl Meets God" is also highly recommended.

Conclusion:

I like that this is written about religion from the perspective of one who actually understands it, yet not for the religious shelves. Ragen intends a critique of many aspects of the Hassidic lifestyle, but she does not explicate hatefully. Nor does she give up on it all. Batsheva loves God. She believes in Him. She’s not written as a caricature of a religious person, which is rare when encountering a character found on, say, a shelf marked something other than religious fiction. That love and belief drips off the pages in a way that speaks to those who understand the language of faith. Since I don’t generally read stuff from the “Religious/Christian fiction” shelf I’ve been pretty hard up to find fiction that portray people of faith as anything but caricatures, nut-jobs or plot-devices. I intend to read many more Naomi Ragen books.

Must Leave, Don't Want to Go

A film I watched recently—a film neither bad nor fantastic, and not the subject of the day in any case—in its best moments called to mind the poem “The South” by Langston Hughes. And once that poem was on my mind I could not get it off, so here it is.

The lazy, laughing South

With blood on its mouth.

The sunny-faced South,

            Beast strong,

            Idiot-brained.

The child-minded South

Scratching in the dead fire’s ashes

For a Negro’s bones.

            Cotton and the moon,

            Warmth, earth, warmth,

            The sky, the sun, the stars

            The magnolia-scented South.

Beautiful, like a woman,

Seductive as a dark-eyed whore,

            Passionate, cruel,

            Honey-lipped, syphilitic—

            That is the South.

And I, who am black, would love her

But she spits in my face.

And I, who am black,

Would give her many rare gifts

But she turns her back upon me.

            So now I seek the North—

            The cold-faced North,

            For she, they say,

            Is a kinder mistress,

And in her house my children

May escape the spell of the South.

This poem was first published in the 1920’s and, while I think it a beautiful poem in context, I think it so outside of context as well. There is a certain theme here that doesn’t really have anything to do with the North or South of Hughes’ day…nor necessarily with race.

It’s to do with home or that one place (or even that one person). It’s the place that raised you or fostered you, and it flows in your veins. The good, bad and ugly of it. Not everyone is going to have so contentious a relationship with a given place as that described in “The South”, but many do and it’s a heart-breaking thing.

The imagery Hughes provides puts into the mind’s eye a picture of a woman—a provocatively alluring woman—shamelessly scorning a man who would do almost anything for her. It’s sad enough when put in such finite, personal terms. But if that woman is a place? A city? A country? A way of life?

It’s a maddening push-and-pull as in the song Mehendi Rachi: “Though I’d love to leave some day, I dare not ever go”...though perhaps the other way around: though I’d love to stay someday, I dare not, I must go.

(And, by the by, it’s not entirely unlike Jane Eyre, who was fiercely tied to Mr. Rochester—and he to her—but she had to leave him first because he would have had her stay as a paramour rather than as a wife. And that would have been wrong and demeaning to her. Satisfying at once, and damaging in the long run.)

The circumstance the poem most reminded me of, though? That of Iraq, oddly enough.

Iraq is a place with beauty and history and roots and violence and prejudice. It is often called Bilad Al-rafidayn: The land of two rivers. Or Wadi Al-rafidayn (valley of two rivers, sometimes simply translated “Mesopotamia”.) These two rivers are the famous Tigris and Euphrates.

However there is a saying—common enough to have become the title of a book, even—that Iraq is the land of three rivers. There are two versions of what this saying means: Some claim the third river is blood. Others claim it is tears. They say this because the history of violence in Iraq is much longer and more complicated than our witness of the past decade.

And yet Iraq can make itself loved in spite of it all. When Iraqi poet Shawqi Abd Al-Amir catalogued a visit to his native country in 2007 he mentioned it’s allurement, despite his long absence.

(translations mine, from original)

“None of us had dared to talk or suggest an outing, but the sun of Baghdad, the relaxation of Friday, and my arrival from Beirut all, in silence, called us to go out on this sort of tour, but we all know the dangers hidden behind such an endeavor.”

And, later, he makes note of people spiting the state of chaos in which they live. By living.

“The baffling thing is that when you are coming in from abroad—coming from the channels of television screens by which you only see the place bloodstained with its people, and blackened in appearance and imagery—when you enter the street and see how people are living and how they engage in their lives and daily work schedules, you almost forget. You forget all you’ve seen and you go down to the coffee shop and sit just like everyone else sits, as though nothing ever happened. This is precisely how life is more infectious than death.”

…and it is how the blood-ties remain in spite of everything. And why Langston Hughes wrote that he would love the South and give her gifts though she was passionate and cruel. And it’s why the ending of the poem is so painful. It doesn’t sound like a joyful flight from misery. It sounds like the heavy-hearted pulling away from a dangerous loved one. I wonder and wish if he could have—or should have—stayed and tried again to wipe the blood off her mouth.

Hard to love a place that might kill you.